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"Do you think they knew we were coming, Sir?" Gozzi asked, speaking softly enough to avoid other ears, and Giscard snorted again as his chief of staff followed his own thoughts.

"I think they must have figured out that something was coming, at any rate," he replied. "I doubt they managed to penetrate Thunderbolt, if that's what you're asking. But they wouldn't have needed to do that to set up an ambush here. All they would really have needed was one analyst with enough IQ to seal his own shoes and they could have guessed what would happen if the negotiations collapsed. And if they did that, even Janacek could figure out this would be the best spot to use for a counterstroke. After all, when you combine the concentration of most of their modern ships with the political significance of San Martin, this is undoubtedly the most valuable target we could have hit. That's precisely why this is our strongest task force. Which means that if they wanted a place to arrange for us to suffer a mischief, this would certainly have been a logical choice for it.

"If that's what they had in mind, though, it looks like they've come up a little short on the execution end. We know they're out there now, and they haven't gotten us quite deeply enough in-system to pin us between their two forces."

He fell silent once more, studying the displays and pondering options and alternatives. He could try turning on either one of the enemy task forces with his entire force. He'd have an excellent chance of defeating either one of them in isolation, if he could intercept it before its allies could come to its assistance. But if they chose to avoid action with one force while pursuing with the other, they might manage to prevent the interception he wanted. Or, even worse, let him have it but with too tight a time window to defeat the force he'd "caught" before the other one caught him from behind, in turn.

If the Committee of Public Safety had still been in power, the decision ultimately wouldn't have been his. It would have belonged to his people's commissioner, and if he'd dared to argue about it he would have found himself shot for his temerity. But the Republic had no commissioners, and he drew a deep breath and committed himself to the decision no admiral of the People's Navy would ever have dared to make.

"Go to evasion Tango-Baker-Three-One," he told Gozzi.

"Are you sure about this, Sir?" Gozzi asked in a painstakingly neutral tone.

"I am, Marius," Giscard replied with a small smile. "Trevor's Star was a primary objective, I know. And I know why Admiral Theisman wanted Third Fleet destroyed. But if they've managed to assemble this much firepower here, then they have to be buck naked on all of Thunderbolt's other objectives. That means we've kicked their ass everywhere else. I realize that we've got a chance here to carry through and cripple or destroy three-quarters of the combined Manty—Grayson SD(P) force. But we've got too many pre-pod ships of our own, and we'd be risking over half of our own SD(P)s. Not to mention the fact that there's too good chance of their catching us between them instead of us catching them separated." He shook his head. "No. There's always tomorrow, and if we've gotten out as lightly as I think we have elsewhere, the comparative loss figures are going to hit Manticoran public morale right in the belly. I don't want to give them a victory here to offset that effect. Nor do I want them to think that they hurt us badly enough we can't continue to take the war to them."

"Yes, Sir," Gozzi acknowledged and headed for the com section yet again.

Giscard watched him go, and then returned his attention to the master plot. He knew that Gozzi's question had reflected the chief of staff's concern over the possible repercussions the decision might have on Giscard's career. His own concern, hidden behind a confidently serene expression, had nothing to do with his career prospects. He knew Tom Theisman would expect him to exercise both judgment and discretion in the case like this, nor was he afraid that Theisman would see his decision to withdraw as an act of cowardice. For that matter, he snorted in genuine amusement, he could probably count on the President to intervene if things got too grim.

No, his concern was that he might be wrong. He didn't think he was. But he could be. And if he was, if he was throwing away a genuine opportunity to gut the Manticoran Alliance's wall of battle, the implications of that would dwarf anything that might ever have happened to anyone's career.

* * *

Michael Janvier, Baron High Ridge, was also thinking about careers as he paused, some hours later, in the hallway outside the polished wooden door. An armed sentry—a captain in the uniform of the Queen's Own—stood stiffly at attention before that door, and the immaculately uniformed woman didn't even glance at the Prime Minister.

High Ridge knew that the traditions and training of the Queen's Own required that ramrod stiffness, that apparent obliviousness to anything even as the sentry saw and noted everything that happened about her. But there was more to it than mere tradition or training. Something no one could ever have put a finger upon or isolated, but nonetheless there.

An edge of contempt, High Ridge thought as he made certain the mask of his own expression was firmly in place. The hostility that all of Elizabeth III's partisans reflected, each in his or her own way.

The Prime Minister drew an unobtrusive breath, squared mental shoulders, and moved the two meters closer which brought him within the sentry's designated official field of view.

The captain reacted then. Her head snapped to the side, her eyes focused on High Ridge, and her right hand flicked to the butt of the holstered pulser at her side with mechanical precision. It was all meticulously choreographed. Only an idiot would have thought the captain was anything less than a deadly serious professional, yet her response was also a display of formal military theater. One which required an equally formal response from him.

"The Prime Minister," he informed her, as if she didn't already know perfectly well who he was. "I crave a few minutes of Her Majesty's time to attend to affairs of government."

"Yes, Sir," the captain said, never removing her right hand from her pulser, and her left hand moved in a precisely metered arc to activate her com.

"The Prime Minister is here to see Her Majesty," she announced, and High Ridge's jaw muscles clenched. Usually, he rather enjoyed the formalities, the time-polished procedures and protocols which underscored the dignity and gravity of the office he held and the Star Kingdom he served. Today, each of them was a fresh grain of salt rubbed into the wound which brought him here, and he wished they could just get on with it. It wasn't as if his secretary hadn't scheduled the appointment before he ever came, or as if sophisticated security systems hadn't identified him and kept him under direct observation from the instant he entered Mount Royal Palace's grounds.

The sentry's eyes held him with unwavering, impersonal concentration—still flawed by that cold little core of contempt—as she listened to her earbug. Then she took her hand from her pulser and pressed the door activation button.

"Her Majesty will receive you, Sir," she said crisply, and snapped back into her original guard position, gazing once more down the hall as if he no longer existed.

He inhaled again and stepped through the door.

Queen Elizabeth waited for him, and his jaw tightened further. She'd received him in this same formal office many times over the past four T-years. Not happily, but with at least a pretense of respect for his office, however poorly she'd concealed the fact that she despised the man who held it. In those same four years, she'd never seen him a single time except for the unavoidable requirements of government and her constitutional duties, yet both of them, by mutual unspoken assent, had used the mask of formal courtesy when she had.

Today was different. She sat behind her desk, but unlike any other time he'd entered this office, she did not invite him to be seated. In fact, there was no chair in which he might have sat. The coffee table, the small couch which had faced it, and the conversational nook of comfortable armchairs, had all vanished. He had no doubt at all that she'd ordered their removal the instant his secretary screened the Palace for an appointment, and he knew his fury—and dismay—showed through his own masklike expression as the unspoken, coldly intentional insult went home.